Microsoft may be turning a new page in dropping Live Spaces

Microsoft is getting rid of Live Spaces, steering users of its blogging …

Since 2004, Microsoft has had a free blogging-cum-social networking platform it called Windows Live Spaces (née MSN Spaces). Though it attracted a few users, it never gained a huge amount of traction in the market, and lacked the range of features found in more mainstream blogging platforms. So it's perhaps unsurprising that Microsoft is killing off Live Spaces.

What is surprising is what Microsoft is replacing it with. Try to create a Live Space blog now, and you'll be directed to WordPress.com, the hosted blogging service powered by the WordPress blog software. For its part, WordPress now includes some additional features to make it a suitable slot-in replacement for Live Spaces; old Spaces can now be imported into WordPress.com blogs, and WordPress.com blog updates can be published via Messenger Connect.

Windows Live Essentials 2011 will also update the Windows Live Writer WYSIWYG blog editor so that it defaults to publishing to WordPress.com accounts.

The decision is not, in and of itself, likely to cause any real upheaval or upset. WordPress is a better platform than Live Spaces was, and as a platform, WordPress is far more widely used. WordPress also has a rich selection of extensions and paid upgrades, a reflection of its popularity. Existing users will have to learn a new platform, but they'll be better off for doing so.

You mean other people make software worth using?

But this is a remarkable decision nonetheless. Microsoft is king of Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome. The company has historically chosen to reinvent the wheel on many occasions: creating its own audio and video codecs, its own network protocols, and its own programming languages.

It's not just external inventions that get ignored. Product teams within Microsoft even reinvent other Microsoft software: many of the programming tools overlap and duplicate functionality, many teams have recreated the same user interface concepts over and over. For example, there are at least four different "ribbon" implementations (Office, native Windows Ribbon Framework, MFC, WPF) which all look and behave slightly differently from each other. This is bad for users—programs that look superficially similar have different behavior depending on the which ribbon they use—and wasteful for Microsoft.

The developers can always have some rationale (i.e., the other team's code isn't good enough for some reason, leaving no choice but to start from scratch), but this ignores a much larger issue. Even if teams think their own implementation is superior, hence making their software better, they're actually making their software worse, because it's now needlessly inconsistent and slower to develop.

In its most extreme form, it leads to waste of hundreds of millions of dollars; as part of the KIN debacle, Microsoft bought the successful phone-and-online-services company Danger, and then made Danger rewrite its software to make it use Windows CE instead of NetBSD. Not because there was anything wrong with NetBSD, mind you, but NetBSD wasn't a Microsoft product, so it simply could not be used. One might argue that this may have been the right move long-term, but in the short-term it was a disaster, resulting in a product that was 18 months late and doomed to irrelevance.

Not Invented Here syndrome is not universally bad—sometimes reinventions are a marked improvement on the original. We're all better off for Apple having reinvented Xerox's GUI concept, for example. Bing could be considered to be a reinvention of Google, but Microsoft regards the search market as strategically important: developing the capability in-house makes sense here. But when it is a consistent, almost reflexive response to any problem—and particularly when the reinvented versions are inferior to the originals—it is a problem. It wastes time and money, and leaves the re-inventor trailing behind its competitors.

As such, the switch to WordPress.com—a blog platform written in PHP, hosted on Apache—marks a distinct break from Microsoft tradition. In the blog post announcing the change, the company freely acknowledged that the focus should be on providing the best possible consumer experience, and when this means using best-of-breed third-party services, that should be the approach.

Windows Live: working with you, not against you

The Windows Live team has realized it's no longer necessary to try to build everything in-house and try to compete in every single possible market. Instead, the company is focusing on those areas where it can provide unique value—the Windows Live Writer blogging software, the Windows Live social networking aggregation, integration with Messenger, and so on.

In a similar vein to this, a few weeks ago Microsoft told Ars "nobody wants another Facebook". Facebook is already the best-of-breed social networking platform. It's where the users are, it's where third-parties are writing applications, it's where the interest is. The Microsoft of old might have tried to build its own Facebook (or at least purchase a competitor and bring it into the fold). But the Windows Live team recognizes that this isn't actually providing what users want. We already have our friends set up on Facebook. A new service just gets in the way of the messaging, photo sharing, and virtual farming that we want to do. Integrating Messenger with Facebook enriches our experience in a way that reinvention does not.

This change in attitude has not occurred overnight. Two years ago, when Microsoft first started talking about the Windows Live Essentials, the express intention was to break down the barriers that exist in the online world. It's common to have lots of silos of data—for example, I have photos in Flickr, Facebook, and SkyDrive—that can't be managed or manipulated in a uniform way. With Windows Live Photo Gallery, I can publish to any of these quickly and easily. It's not perfect, as it's still frustratingly unidirectional (I can publish to these different places, but not readily browse them or move files between them), but nonetheless it demonstrates the broader point: Microsoft can provide value without having to reinvent the wheel.

This is a positive move from the software giant. Using the best of what third parties have to offer frees the company to focus on the important thing: making better software. This is a win for customers and Redmond alike. Customers get software that works with the services they use, and that does new and useful things. Microsoft gets more streamlined, more responsive development, and produces software that enhances, rather than detracts from, the Windows brand.

Can other parts of Microsoft learn from the Windows Live team? Not Invented Here syndrome doesn't disappear overnight. Fiefdoms exist in every massive company, and one way for their lords to remain in power is to maintain that tools and practices used elsewhere in the business can always be remade better. The desire to constantly reinvent the wheel is deeply ingrained within Microsoft. In many ways, Redmond appears stuck in neutral. Cultural changes such as the one that has Windows Live Spaces bloggers switching to WordPress have the potential to shift the software giant into forward gear, if they are allowed to spread.

53 Reader Comments

I noticed the ie9 blog had mysteriously shown up on Wordpress yesterday. It all makes sense. I do think this needs to be seen in the context of Microsoft seeing Google as its chief competitor. After all, Wordpress is the main competitor to Blogger.

This isn't entirely new... Microsoft has been pushing jQuery as the Javascript library of choice, lending weight to an open source (!) project that they had nothing to do with in the beginning.

As for the author's ribbon example, that's a bit specious: The Office team doesn't write components for other teams, it sells software, and they were the first to do it. MFC and WPF are incompatible, and I have never heard of the Ribbon Framework...

This is a welcome trend. Maybe they also realized that a lot of us prefer using desktop software. By simply giving in on what services that software can connect to, they bring some people back to being Windows users and not just web browsers.

Well, why don't they? It's my impression that the Office team is the one that sets the standard for Windows UI, so it seems perfectly logical that they would share the components they wrote with other teams, and perhaps migrate them into core Windows frameworks.

I really like this new page that Microsoft is turning. It makes the windows live essentials bundle ... useful. Too often these "software" bundles are just ways of locking you into a particular megacorpations ecosystem. This makes the software more useful and maybe will help slow the trend of everything moving to the web.

This is a welcome trend. Maybe they also realized that a lot of us prefer using desktop software. By simply giving in on what services that software can connect to, they bring some people back to being Windows users and not just web browsers.

This

[quote="gruntboyx"]I really like this new page that Microsoft is turning. It makes the windows live essentials bundle ... useful. Too often these "software" bundles are just ways of locking you into a particular megacorpations ecosystem. This makes the software more useful and maybe will help slow the trend of everything moving to the web.[/url]And this.

"Everyone" seems to agree that the future's in the cloud, but I'm not sure that's a foregone conclusion. There are advantages to it - off-site storage and universal access - but the fact that the tools and UI are all presented through the browser is a limitation. Google sees this, and is responding by building a browser which is an OS. Microsoft has the opportunity to go the other way, and put tools inside their OS which operate past the browser.

First, it's far from the first time MS is promoting someone else's tools. C++, for instance, isn't going away and Visual Studio is still the premium tool to use it. C# is new because there wasn't any existing platform that was capable of taking over the mess that is Windows development and produce more stable application while retaining the advantages of the OS. They used TCP/IP, Kerberos, LDAP and countless other protocol in building windows 2000 and up, etc. So, it might be the first time you noticed it, but MS has been adopting other people's product for quite some time now.

Second, wordpress doesn't run on Apache. You can make it run perfectly well on IIS. It runs on MySQL exclusively, though (which is still a pain).

Third, they simply stop to provide a service and offer a migration to another platform. Kudos to them to choosing wordpress.com instead of something running on their own stack (like the absolutely terrible CommunityServer) but it's not the same thing as saying they are abandoning any of their traditional market.

I wish Wordpress.com would reciprocate and actually take the time to make their software work with MSSQL (and, at the same time, other SQL RDBMS).

Not exactly on Apache. Their frontend runs on nginx since 2008. It's not clear though if nginx is being used just as a proxy and load balancer for Apache, or it's communicating with PHP/FastCGI backends directly.

Microsoft's dumping of Live Spaces is a huge mistake...well, "was" a huge mistake. Then again, it hasn't been used by me since '07 (and I was a huge Live & MS supporter a few years back) so I can understand their decision to finally axe a dying/dead service...but back in '05-'06 it was actually a very competent blogging platform for people who already had MSN accounts (wasn't perfect, but pretty decent). That said, Live Spaces (like many Microsoft services) has been outright ignored by them over the past 3-4 years and it's no wonder none of the Live services went anywhere....Microsoft didn't even give them a chance!

Heck - Microsoft couldn't even commit to renaming Hotmail to "Live Mail" back in the day and went for the executive-pleasing/lets-not-rock-the-boat "Windows Live Hotmail"...yuck. And "Bing"? Apparently no one at MS has taken a marketing class and understands what names are BAD or STUPID to use.

So when MS whines* that "no one needs another Facebook" or "WordPress is all people need" it's only because THEY can't produce something comparable. Lord knows they have the resources to do so -- they're Microsoft! (*-And they are whining - if their awful MSN Soapbox could have competed with YouTube or Live Profiles/Messenger could have competed with FB/Twitter, they'd be singin'a different tune)

But at the end of the day, MS is just what it is --- a company so out of touch with web services they are almost always an "also ran" in every category they "compete" in.

Well, why don't they? It's my impression that the Office team is the one that sets the standard for Windows UI, so it seems perfectly logical that they would share the components they wrote with other teams, and perhaps migrate them into core Windows frameworks.

The second they do, the EU and the DoJ will pull out our friend Sherman and start waving their hands. Alot of the collaboration that Microsoft could do, has been beaten out of them by overzealous courts and lawyers.

On the topic of Facebook integration, here's my problem with this. Facebook isn't a "protocol" or a "platform"; it's a web site. Web sites come and go. What happens when the fickle public decides that X new social service is the new Facebook? All these companies invested in this web site masquerading as a platform will get burned. We all remember that MySpace was the place to be at one point. Eventually, Facebook will find it's Facebook in the same way that MySpace found its Facebook.

Last thought. Maybe now, Wordpress will get off MySql and reciprocate the attention with a serious SqlServer implementation.

Not invented here syndrome isn't entirely bad. It's recognizing that you might not want to put your fate into the hands of someone else.

Microsoft's dumping of Live Spaces is a huge mistake...well, "was" a huge mistake. Then again, it hasn't been used by me since '07 (and I was a huge Live & MS supporter a few years back) so I can understand their decision to finally axe a dying/dead service...but back in '05-'06 it was actually a very competent blogging platform for people who already had MSN accounts (wasn't perfect, but pretty decent). That said, Live Spaces (like many Microsoft services) has been outright ignored by them over the past 3-4 years and it's no wonder none of the Live services went anywhere....Microsoft didn't even give them a chance!

Heck - Microsoft couldn't even commit to renaming Hotmail to "Live Mail" back in the day and went for the executive-pleasing/lets-not-rock-the-boat "Windows Live Hotmail"...yuck. And "Bing"? Apparently no one at MS has taken a marketing class and understands what names are BAD or STUPID to use.

So when MS whines* that "no one needs another Facebook" or "WordPress is all people need" it's only because THEY can't produce something comparable. Lord knows they have the resources to do so -- they're Microsoft! (*-And they are whining - if their awful MSN Soapbox could have competed with YouTube or Live Profiles/Messenger could have competed with FB/Twitter, they'd be singin'a different tune)

But at the end of the day, MS is just what it is --- a company so out of touch with web services they are almost always an "also ran" in every category they "compete" in.

I followed you until about half way in, then you lost me. The branding folks I have talked to casually have all said that the Bing branding is quite good and consistent with what they look to do for services like that. Memorable, short, and easy to reinforce. So I think you need to tell us why that one is so stupid before I believe you.

I'm also curious why you think people DO want another Facebook? There has been a general rejection of multiple social platforms of this type already...Facebook and MySpaces were never leading at the same time from the front. You could argue that Microsoft had a chance to compete with Facebook way back before it took root I guess, but so could have anyone else, including Google, Apple, etc...that still doesn't show that there is a real demand for it NOW...

The second they do, the EU and the DoJ will pull out our friend Sherman and start waving their hands.

I doubt it. I don't remember anyone ever complaining about Office using documented APIs or sharing components with other tools. Nor could I see any problem with OS development being driven by the need to provide tools and components that would benefit Office, so long as everything else could use those tools and components as well. (That is, after all, what an OS is supposed to do: Provide components & services to make writing co-existing applications easier.)

The legal problems were from MS apps using undocumented parts of the OS, as well as unrelated anti-competitive behaviour (e.g. punishing vendors who also shipped BeOS on the hardware they sold).

First, it's far from the first time MS is promoting someone else's tools. C++, for instance, isn't going away and Visual Studio is still the premium tool to use it. C# is new because there wasn't any existing platform that was capable of taking over the mess that is Windows development and produce more stable application while retaining the advantages of the OS. They used TCP/IP, Kerberos, LDAP and countless other protocol in building windows 2000 and up, etc. So, it might be the first time you noticed it, but MS has been adopting other people's product for quite some time now.

Rubbish.

Kerberos, LDAP and these "countless" other protocols were always "extended" by MS into something that was backward compatible for MS, but not "forward compatible" for third parties - so Exchange can speak LDAP but your standard LDAP server can't speak ActiveDirectory, and legal briefs had to be filed on MIT's behalf over the incompatibility of Microsoft's Kerberos implementation. There are similarly proprietary Microsoft extensions to C++ (SEH, #pragma once), but that's pretty much okay because every other vendor does the same thing.

What, you thought "embrace and extend" was fiction?

Kressilac wrote:

danchr wrote:

ShlomoAbraham wrote:

The Office team doesn't write components for other teams…

Well, why don't they? It's my impression that the Office team is the one that sets the standard for Windows UI, so it seems perfectly logical that they would share the components they wrote with other teams, and perhaps migrate them into core Windows frameworks.

The second they do, the EU and the DoJ will pull out our friend Sherman and start waving their hands. Alot of the collaboration that Microsoft could do, has been beaten out of them by overzealous courts and lawyers.

Eh. If that was so, why wasn't Office Team publishing widgets for the Platform SDK before the antitrust suit and settlement? I mean, you can get new common controls with each Internet Explorer update (IE being the software that actually predicated the lawsuit), but you can't get new tab controls or a ribbon from Office? Let's even say you don't add the new controls to Platform SDK and only make it available to users who have that specific version of Office installed... nope.

The real reason Office Team doesn't write controls for Windows is turf. Microsoft is notorious for the competition among its internal teams, with Office Team being the worst.

If MS had just hoarded the treasure from Office, Server and Windows XP they would be more or less in the same place they are now, only with more money. Cisco is better at this, buying themselves into markets rather than developing its own.

Another example is that with the fall update, the XBox 360 will support HTML5 streaming technologies. ESPN didn't want to convert all of their video to Microsoft formats, so Microsoft decided to add HTML 5 video streaming to the XBox instead.

If MS had just hoarded the treasure from Office, Server and Windows XP they would be more or less in the same place they are now, only with more money. Cisco is better at this, buying themselves into markets rather than developing its own.

Exactly!

Oh. Except buying Yahoo for the price they offered would probably have been a mistake.

Also, I don't see how they could have bought into console gaming.

But in the tech industry, there are almost no points for second place. MS has to do fewer things and do them better.

If MS had just hoarded the treasure from Office, Server and Windows XP they would be more or less in the same place they are now, only with more money. Cisco is better at this, buying themselves into markets rather than developing its own.

That's a common thought in these forums, but it doesn't hold up. Maybe since Microsoft aims at all markets (consumer, small business, enterprise), their failures are just a bit more public, so people think they should just stick with their most public competencies. However, saying they should just 'stick with Office/Server/XP' ignores...

1) If they did that they wouldn't have successful products like Exchange, Sharepoint, Visual Studio, XBox, Sql Server.

2) Office products were developed against entrenched markets (WordPerfect was dominant before Word, Lotus before Excel, Eudora before Outlook, etc..). Competing viciously against those products has made Office the mint it is now.

3) There was serious skepticism when Microsoft entered the Server market with NT: Windows was regarded as buggy and nobody thought it would be as successful as it was.

4) Historically, tech companies merging successfully has not been a good investment considering the high buyout costs they generally have.

I wish Wordpress.com would reciprocate and actually take the time to make their software work with MSSQL (and, at the same time, other SQL RDBMS).

I'm glad I'm not the only one that sees MySql as a hole in the Wordpress offering. My infrastructure has IIS and Sql Server and I do not want to install a second database engine on my already taxed database server. It's counterproductive. I have no problem installing an alternative to ASP.Net because web processing is a short lived process so PhP, Perl, Ruby or .Net wouldn't compete for resources when installed side by side. Databases are a much bigger deal and it bugs me that the the exceptional piece of software that is Wordpress has no SQL Server implementation. It's why my blog doesn't run Wordpress and won't.

I wish Wordpress.com would reciprocate and actually take the time to make their software work with MSSQL (and, at the same time, other SQL RDBMS).

I'm glad I'm not the only one that sees MySql as a hole in the Wordpress offering. My infrastructure has IIS and Sql Server and I do not want to install a second database engine on my already taxed database server. It's counterproductive. I have no problem installing an alternative to ASP.Net because web processing is a short lived process so PhP, Perl, Ruby or .Net wouldn't compete for resources when installed side by side. Databases are a much bigger deal and it bugs me that the the exceptional piece of software that is Wordpress has no SQL Server implementation. It's why my blog doesn't run Wordpress and won't.

Microsoft's dumping of Live Spaces is a huge mistake...well, "was" a huge mistake. Then again, it hasn't been used by me since '07 (and I was a huge Live & MS supporter a few years back) so I can understand their decision to finally axe a dying/dead service...but back in '05-'06 it was actually a very competent blogging platform for people who already had MSN accounts (wasn't perfect, but pretty decent). That said, Live Spaces (like many Microsoft services) has been outright ignored by them over the past 3-4 years and it's no wonder none of the Live services went anywhere....Microsoft didn't even give them a chance!

Heck - Microsoft couldn't even commit to renaming Hotmail to "Live Mail" back in the day and went for the executive-pleasing/lets-not-rock-the-boat "Windows Live Hotmail"...yuck. And "Bing"? Apparently no one at MS has taken a marketing class and understands what names are BAD or STUPID to use.

So when MS whines* that "no one needs another Facebook" or "WordPress is all people need" it's only because THEY can't produce something comparable. Lord knows they have the resources to do so -- they're Microsoft! (*-And they are whining - if their awful MSN Soapbox could have competed with YouTube or Live Profiles/Messenger could have competed with FB/Twitter, they'd be singin'a different tune)

But at the end of the day, MS is just what it is --- a company so out of touch with web services they are almost always an "also ran" in every category they "compete" in.

I followed you until about half way in, then you lost me. The branding folks I have talked to casually have all said that the Bing branding is quite good and consistent with what they look to do for services like that. Memorable, short, and easy to reinforce. So I think you need to tell us why that one is so stupid before I believe you.

Well then your "branding folks" are just as hopelessly clueless, worthless corporate bunch as MS' "branding folks' - anyone I ever talked agreed that the name 'Bing' is very close to being downright embarrassing but definitely stupid and cheesy.

But hey, it's Microsoft, as the OP said - it MUST be stupid, lame and cheesy and come with convoluted, clunky, un-intuitive UI, I might add.

Quote:

I'm also curious why you think people DO want another Facebook? There has been a general rejection of multiple social platforms of this type already...Facebook and MySpaces were never leading at the same time from the front. You could argue that Microsoft had a chance to compete with Facebook way back before it took root I guess, but so could have anyone else, including Google, Apple, etc...that still doesn't show that there is a real demand for it NOW...

Agreed, Microsoft always "also ran", MS never LEADS, barely ever invents anything anymore - it tells volumes when your with project ideas you submit a short description of how the competition is doing it...

I wish Wordpress.com would reciprocate and actually take the time to make their software work with MSSQL (and, at the same time, other SQL RDBMS).

I'm glad I'm not the only one that sees MySql as a hole in the Wordpress offering. My infrastructure has IIS and Sql Server and I do not want to install a second database engine on my already taxed database server. It's counterproductive. I have no problem installing an alternative to ASP.Net because web processing is a short lived process so PhP, Perl, Ruby or .Net wouldn't compete for resources when installed side by side. Databases are a much bigger deal and it bugs me that the the exceptional piece of software that is Wordpress has no SQL Server implementation. It's why my blog doesn't run Wordpress and won't.

I agree, DBs are a big deal and I wouldn't touch MSSQL with a 10ft pole for production so I'm somehow puzzled that you see MySQL as a 'hole' and then you mention IIS and SQL Server in the same sentence...

I agree, DBs are a big deal and I wouldn't touch MSSQL with a 10ft pole for production so I'm somehow puzzled that you see MySQL as a 'hole' and then you mention IIS and SQL Server in the same sentence...

While I'm sure there are tasks for which MSSQL isn't a competitive option, it is very competitive in many important markets (and I have no idea where WordPress fits into this spectrum) -- say, medium-scale enterprise systems. We have thousands of customers who successfully run their business on (and entrust all their business data to) SQL Server. We've run into a few issues with locking and very high transaction volumes hurting performance, but it's at the fringes.

Microsoft's dumping of Live Spaces is a huge mistake...well, "was" a huge mistake. Then again, it hasn't been used by me since '07 (and I was a huge Live & MS supporter a few years back) so I can understand their decision to finally axe a dying/dead service...but back in '05-'06 it was actually a very competent blogging platform for people who already had MSN accounts (wasn't perfect, but pretty decent). That said, Live Spaces (like many Microsoft services) has been outright ignored by them over the past 3-4 years and it's no wonder none of the Live services went anywhere....Microsoft didn't even give them a chance!

Heck - Microsoft couldn't even commit to renaming Hotmail to "Live Mail" back in the day and went for the executive-pleasing/lets-not-rock-the-boat "Windows Live Hotmail"...yuck. And "Bing"? Apparently no one at MS has taken a marketing class and understands what names are BAD or STUPID to use.

So when MS whines* that "no one needs another Facebook" or "WordPress is all people need" it's only because THEY can't produce something comparable. Lord knows they have the resources to do so -- they're Microsoft! (*-And they are whining - if their awful MSN Soapbox could have competed with YouTube or Live Profiles/Messenger could have competed with FB/Twitter, they'd be singin'a different tune)

But at the end of the day, MS is just what it is --- a company so out of touch with web services they are almost always an "also ran" in every category they "compete" in.

I followed you until about half way in, then you lost me. The branding folks I have talked to casually have all said that the Bing branding is quite good and consistent with what they look to do for services like that. Memorable, short, and easy to reinforce. So I think you need to tell us why that one is so stupid before I believe you.

Well then your "branding folks" are just as hopelessly clueless, worthless corporate bunch as MS' "branding folks' - anyone I ever talked agreed that the name 'Bing' is very close to being downright embarrassing but definitely stupid and cheesy.

But hey, it's Microsoft, as the OP said - it MUST be stupid, lame and cheesy and come with convoluted, clunky, un-intuitive UI, I might add.

Quote:

I'm also curious why you think people DO want another Facebook? There has been a general rejection of multiple social platforms of this type already...Facebook and MySpaces were never leading at the same time from the front. You could argue that Microsoft had a chance to compete with Facebook way back before it took root I guess, but so could have anyone else, including Google, Apple, etc...that still doesn't show that there is a real demand for it NOW...

Agreed, Microsoft always "also ran", MS never LEADS, barely ever invents anything anymore - it tells volumes when your with project ideas you submit a short description of how the competition is doing it...

Over 90% of computer users love and use Microsoft products everyday and they have rejected Apple's idea of computing because of Microsoft's products. It's obvious that to 90% of the world, Apple offers the inferior experience and they are proving it by buying more PCs that ever. In fact it took less than 6 months for Windows 7 to make Mac OSX market share irrelevant (all versions combined)So yeah Microsoft knows what they are doing because people in the world are basing their lives and computer needs on Microsoft software

I wish Wordpress.com would reciprocate and actually take the time to make their software work with MSSQL (and, at the same time, other SQL RDBMS).

Good luck. And Wordpress isn't the only open-source project like this. I've been running a hacked instance of Drupal on Oracle for 4+ years now. You've got to create an interoperability layer to take the MySQL queries and reformat them so they work on Oracle, and then for each module you add you've got to check their SQL queries too for the same issues. And its highly unlikely you'll ever get module contributors to check their code against Oracle XE (the free version of Oracle for developers).

"It's not just external inventions that get ignored. Product teams within Microsoft even reinvent other Microsoft software: many of the programming tools overlap and duplicate functionality, many teams have recreated the same user interface concepts over and over. For example, there are at least four different "ribbon" implementations (Office, native Windows Ribbon Framework, MFC, WPF) which all look and behave slightly differently from each other. This is bad for users—programs that look superficially similar have different behavior depending on the which ribbon they use—and wasteful for Microsoft."

I can tell you that happens lots of times, even with internal tools. Teams in the same building write similar tools that do similar things. Seen this across teams located in different geographic locations too. The problem is politics. Teams don't like to provide support for what they own, so the other team takes ownership of it's own tool which basically does the same thing.

I agree, DBs are a big deal and I wouldn't touch MSSQL with a 10ft pole for production so I'm somehow puzzled that you see MySQL as a 'hole' and then you mention IIS and SQL Server in the same sentence...

I would be curious to know what specific attributes of SQL Server you find problematic.

Heck - Microsoft couldn't even commit to renaming Hotmail to "Live Mail" back in the day and went for the executive-pleasing/lets-not-rock-the-boat "Windows Live Hotmail"...yuck. And "Bing"? Apparently no one at MS has taken a marketing class and understands what names are BAD or STUPID to use.

I followed you until about half way in, then you lost me. The branding folks I have talked to casually have all said that the Bing branding is quite good and consistent with what they look to do for services like that. Memorable, short, and easy to reinforce. So I think you need to tell us why that one is so stupid before I believe you.

szlevi wrote:

Well then your "branding folks" are just as hopelessly clueless, worthless corporate bunch as MS' "branding folks' - anyone I ever talked agreed that the name 'Bing' is very close to being downright embarrassing but definitely stupid and cheesy.

But hey, it's Microsoft, as the OP said - it MUST be stupid, lame and cheesy and come with convoluted, clunky, un-intuitive UI, I might add.

I'm not a "Bing" hater because I hate Microsoft...for many years I was a huge Microsoft supporter...even have a super short @live.com email address because I was totally into their Live branding push back in the mid-'00s...but you have to remember - Bing is nothing more than Windows Live Search witha new name.

I'm dead serious. Microsoft simply did a crap job in promoting all-things Live (no doubt because of internal battles...just look at how long MSN stayed alive and IS STILL ALIVE!) and it was actually a very good Search and Maps service.

As for "Bing" it had NOTHING to do with teh rest of Microsoft and that was the problem. People who hate Microsoft may see that as a good thing but the thing was millions of people knew what Live Search was when tehy checked their Live Hotmail and used Live Spaces and open Live Messeneger and shared content on Live Photos, etc. --- when Microsoft renamed it to "Bing" (a named I'm convinced they took because all the good domains are gone...look at "cuil.com" for proof) MS was effectively saying, "We're officially done with Live stuff now. The other stuff you've been using is next."

So that's why "Bing" is a bad name AND a failure in marketing. Live Search didn't need rebranding - it needed publicity and official MS support. And yes, "Bing" was chosen because MS wanted something that could used as a verb as in, "I binged it." Thats ure caught on, huh?

Lemurs wrote:

I'm also curious why you think people DO want another Facebook? There has been a general rejection of multiple social platforms of this type already...Facebook and MySpaces were never leading at the same time from the front. You could argue that Microsoft had a chance to compete with Facebook way back before it took root I guess, but so could have anyone else, including Google, Apple, etc...that still doesn't show that there is a real demand for it NOW...

At this point, yeah - trying to introduce a barnd new social network would be pointless. People switched once from Myspace to Facebook...I doubt very much adults will switch yet again unless there is some radical new way of doing social networking (holograms maybe? ...but yeah, back in '05-'08 the tech world was very different. MS could have done what it does best and BOUGHT MySpace if it wanted a pre-builtsocial network. Obviously MySpace had a price. And early on, FB did too (before it hit critical mass in the late '00s). But MS hasn't acquired ANYTHING of value social network wise over the past 5 years. And the stuff they did make they are killing off. It's almost as if...they don't care about social networking at all! </shocker>

Wakashizuma wrote:

Over 90% of computer users love and use Microsoft products everyday and they have rejected Apple's idea of computing because of Microsoft's products. It's obvious that to 90% of the world, Apple offers the inferior experience and they are proving it by buying more PCs that ever. In fact it took less than 6 months for Windows 7 to make Mac OSX market share irrelevant (all versions combined)So yeah Microsoft knows what they are doing because people in the world are basing their lives and computer needs on Microsoft software.

I use Windows everyday but I don't love it. And for years at my jobs where I worked as a graphic designer I used Mac OS 9 - X every day too. Didn't lobve those either. If Google OS turns out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, consumers will move to that and ditch Windows (don't think they will). I'm even seriously considering switching to Ubuntu from here on out. Point is, marketshare does not equal "love"...it just means it's what people are used to and most people don't want to radically change things frequently. That's why - getting back to my original point - if Microsoft never planned to promote the LIve stuff properly they shouldn't have done anything to begin with. All it did was really piss off and/or disappoint Microsoft supporters like me.

"It's not just external inventions that get ignored. Product teams within Microsoft even reinvent other Microsoft software: many of the programming tools overlap and duplicate functionality, many teams have recreated the same user interface concepts over and over. For example, there are at least four different "ribbon" implementations (Office, native Windows Ribbon Framework, MFC, WPF) which all look and behave slightly differently from each other. This is bad for users—programs that look superficially similar have different behavior depending on the which ribbon they use—and wasteful for Microsoft."

I can tell you that happens lots of times, even with internal tools. Teams in the same building write similar tools that do similar things. Seen this across teams located in different geographic locations too. The problem is politics. Teams don't like to provide support for what they own, so the other team takes ownership of it's own tool which basically does the same thing.

It's not just politics. It's a problem for every big company. If every team has to standardize on a single set of infrastructure, then you potentially have a huge bottleneck for changes, and teams battling over whose features get priority in the implementation. To pick an example of this at its worst, consider the Kin. Nobody wanted the team to rewrite all the tools MS already had, so they ported it to run on Microsoft's existing tools. The result? Years of delay and a product that could only be described as a complete failure on every level.

Of course, as you point out, having every team reinvent the whole stack is no panacea either. Interop becomes incrdibly difficult. To pick on Microsoft again, this manifest itsself in the fact that every Microsoft team has had its own incompatible online backend and storage, and you could just go to SkyDrive and do everything.

I met people from one large internet company who told me that their team owned it's own stack from the data backend al the way up to their piece of the web frontend, to the point where the team (I don't think there were more than 10 people) had a pager they passed around. They had a fairly wide choice of development tools to choose from, and were free to pick whatever made sense to them. This is hopelessly redundant, but I assume the point was to retain the rapid development capabilities of a startup despite the fact that the company was much too large to fit into that mold using more common development standards.

In summary: it's tough to decide how to balance all this out for any company big enough to have this problem.

So that's why "Bing" is a bad name AND a failure in marketing. Live Search didn't need rebranding - it needed publicity and official MS support. And yes, "Bing" was chosen because MS wanted something that could used as a verb as in, "I binged it." Thats ure caught on, huh?

Bing is quite different from Live Search. And they keep on adding to the service.

Quote:

But MS hasn't acquired ANYTHING of value social network wise over the past 5 years. And the stuff they did make they are killing off. It's almost as if...they don't care about social networking at all! </shocker>

"The two companies said on Wednesday that Microsoft would pay $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. The investment values Facebook, which is three and a half years old and will bring in about $150 million in revenue this year, at $15 billion."

MS isn't pursuing their own social network because they bought into Facebook.

I'm dead serious. Microsoft simply did a crap job in promoting all-things Live (no doubt because of internal battles...just look at how long MSN stayed alive and IS STILL ALIVE!) and it was actually a very good Search and Maps service.

As for "Bing" it had NOTHING to do with teh rest of Microsoft and that was the problem. People who hate Microsoft may see that as a good thing but the thing was millions of people knew what Live Search was when tehy checked their Live Hotmail and used Live Spaces and open Live Messeneger and shared content on Live Photos, etc. --- when Microsoft renamed it to "Bing" (a named I'm convinced they took because all the good domains are gone...look at "cuil.com" for proof) MS was effectively saying, "We're officially done with Live stuff now. The other stuff you've been using is next."

So that's why "Bing" is a bad name AND a failure in marketing. Live Search didn't need rebranding - it needed publicity and official MS support. And yes, "Bing" was chosen because MS wanted something that could used as a verb as in, "I binged it." Thats ure caught on, huh?

Live Search needed rebranding because they had made all those changes and no one cared. Live Search had absolutely nothing to recommend it at launch (especially compared to Google), and it had been written off as a sad joke. People (especially incuding the tech press) had about as much enthusiasm for an exciting new version of Live Search that they would about a supposed exciting new version of the AOL website. A surprisingly large number of people used it, but pretty much none of them were technology thought leaders.

Given that it has boosted market share and turned Microsoft's web ssearch platform from an industry joke to a buzzworthy #2 in the industry that people actually pay attention to, I don't see how you could view the rebranding and relaunch as anything other than an overwhelming success.

scottcarmichael wrote:

At this point, yeah - trying to introduce a barnd new social network would be pointless. People switched once from Myspace to Facebook...I doubt very much adults will switch yet again unless there is some radical new way of doing social networking (holograms maybe? ...but yeah, back in '05-'08 the tech world was very different. MS could have done what it does best and BOUGHT MySpace if it wanted a pre-builtsocial network. Obviously MySpace had a price. And early on, FB did too (before it hit critical mass in the late '00s). But MS hasn't acquired ANYTHING of value social network wise over the past 5 years. And the stuff they did make they are killing off. It's almost as if...they don't care about social networking at all! </shocker>

News Corp outbid them. And given what has happened since, that can only be viewed as good for Microsoft. That would have been as disastrous an investment for MS as it was for Rupert Murdoch. If Google can't get any traction with their social networking efforts, I don't see why Microsoft is going to be able to dislodge Facebook either.

Integration with things that people are already happy with is a good thing, especially when the social networking business is not strategically important to Microsoft anyway.

scottcarmichael wrote:

That's why - getting back to my original point - if Microsoft never planned to promote the LIve stuff properly they shouldn't have done anything to begin with. All it did was really piss off and/or disappoint Microsoft supporters like me.

They tried a strategy of branding Live all across the company (everything from search to desktop tools -- Live Essentials -- to Office Live to XBox Live), and it confused people. Live Essentials has thrived, XBox Live has thrived -- but some of the other bits got lost in the shuffle. When they figured out it didn't work, they regrouped (what, 5 years later? certainly they gave it a fair shot) and tried to make something else work. And it has worked.

So for the life of me, I can't figure out what you''re complaining about.

"It's not just external inventions that get ignored. Product teams within Microsoft even reinvent other Microsoft software: many of the programming tools overlap and duplicate functionality, many teams have recreated the same user interface concepts over and over. For example, there are at least four different "ribbon" implementations (Office, native Windows Ribbon Framework, MFC, WPF) which all look and behave slightly differently from each other. This is bad for users—programs that look superficially similar have different behavior depending on the which ribbon they use—and wasteful for Microsoft."

I can tell you that happens lots of times, even with internal tools. Teams in the same building write similar tools that do similar things. Seen this across teams located in different geographic locations too. The problem is politics. Teams don't like to provide support for what they own, so the other team takes ownership of it's own tool which basically does the same thing.

MFC and WPF are not "ribbon" frameworks.You could create a ribbon using them certainly but WPF, for instance, is effectively a massively more flexible version of WinForms and is an additional library of functionality to .NET allowing devs to do tonnes more with less effort.

"It's not just external inventions that get ignored. Product teams within Microsoft even reinvent other Microsoft software: many of the programming tools overlap and duplicate functionality, many teams have recreated the same user interface concepts over and over. For example, there are at least four different "ribbon" implementations (Office, native Windows Ribbon Framework, MFC, WPF) which all look and behave slightly differently from each other. This is bad for users—programs that look superficially similar have different behavior depending on the which ribbon they use—and wasteful for Microsoft."

I can tell you that happens lots of times, even with internal tools. Teams in the same building write similar tools that do similar things. Seen this across teams located in different geographic locations too. The problem is politics. Teams don't like to provide support for what they own, so the other team takes ownership of it's own tool which basically does the same thing.

MFC and WPF are not "ribbon" frameworks.You could create a ribbon using them certainly but WPF, for instance, is effectively a massively more flexible version of WinForms and is an additional library of functionality to .NET allowing devs to do tonnes more with less effort.

I think the point was that there are ribbon implementations for both MFC and WPF, and each of these is different from all the other ribbon implementations. Even though WPF is a distinct UI framework, it would be nice if the WPF ribbon control were extremely consistent with other ribbon control implementations.

Which I agree with -- the WPF ribbon control has some weird behavior sometimes.

I don't think anyone said they were. MFC and WPF both include ribbon controls. So does Win32 (the Windows Ribbon Framework). And then there's the one in Office. And that underwent many changes in Office 2010; the loss of the Orb, and the introduction of the Backstage.

They're all different. Each and every one of them. They look different. They work differently. They're programmed differently. They're inconsistent for developers to develop with. They're inconsistent for Microsoft to maintain. They're inconsistent for users to use.

This is a shitty situation for everyone, and yet it is absolutely standard for Microsoft products.